Case Study: Innovative consultation methods
Name of project: Let’s Talk
Led by: Surrey County Council
Summary: Surrey County Council set up an escape room experience to successfully engage with groups of residents who they had not previously heard from in consultation activities.
The situation: The work began with an ambition to reduce health inequalities and improve community safety. The intention was to share important data with residents about where they lived, and then seek their views. The Council’s usual approach to engagement had been through traditional formal processes. The team were keen to engage with communities who hadn’t participated in previous consultations, and whose perspectives were mostly unknown.
The approach: The council developed an event series called “Let’s Talk Surrey”, focused on creating safe spaces for residents to talk to the council but in an engaging and innovative way. Events were focused on areas which had the poorest health outcomes in Surrey. One area – Englefield Green – was unique in its particularly high ratio of young residents due to the presence of a university. The team needed to consider an approach to engage this community in a new way. The result was to host a pioneer escape room event to encourage residents to think about local issues, gauge their experiences, and listen to their ideas for change.
The details: The council hired a community centre in the heart of the community and split it into four activity spaces that made up the escape room; build your ideal town, cost of living, health with smoothie bikes, and a ‘Dragons Den’ filming activity to find out what residents would fund in the area. Each activity was held in a themed room with relevant statistics and images attached to the walls. Participants had to complete each room before ‘escaping’ to a second hall where there were refreshments and a discussion space with subject experts.
This was a popular and powerful engagement method which enabled the council to hear from 35 residents, including members of the student population (a group that generally has lower engagement with local government bodies), and gain immediate responses to local issues in a way that residents found highly engaging. Their insights were collected to inform the creation of an area plan that has the voices of residents at its core.
Residents shared that they learnt a lot about their area through the data presented, and that they really valued the council truly listening to their ideas and experiences. As a direct result of conversations held during the event, a “Your Fund Surrey” Rejuvenating Englefield Green Hub committee was formed, and a follow-up public consultation was planned to gain further insights from the community on creating space for community activities.
The council has since used components of the escape room at other events and has further developed a digitally accessible version. Using Genially, a software to create fun digital communications, different escape rooms have been set up for the areas of Surrey that the council wants to target. Residents can access these escape rooms for free and can share their views about where they live but in a much more engaging format that doesn’t require them leaving their homes.
Challenges: By collecting views online, there’s a risk that digitally excluded residents could miss out on the opportunity to take part. To make the activity as inclusive as possible, in-person run throughs of the software are being hosted in Surrey Libraries for those that don’t have smartphones or internet access. These individuals can instead use the free computers at the library where digital welfare officers are on hand to offer support. This activity has been particularly popular with younger age groups but older residents have also taken part.
Top lessons:
Be bold in trialling new ideas: By actively seeking to engage with residents on their terms and within their communities, rather than expecting residents to engage with the council via more established methods, the council was able to hold over 2,500 individual conversations with residents that would not have engaged with them in this way before. This has had a positive impact on the relationship between the council and the community, with feedback from residents resoundingly positive.
The insights gathered through this new place-based approach have been fed back to councillors and colleagues to influence their work with residents at parish, town, district, and borough level.
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